News and Announcements

State of the Alliance - October 24, 2026

(10/24/2026)

This is your weekly informal update from the PLA President. I'm recovering from my COVID vaccine (get yours, for yourself and for community care!), so I apologize for the delay.

The work continues! Yesterday, the Board met with Ms. Erin Waters, our DEI consultant, to formally review all the feedback we received in our listening session and elsewhere, and to discuss our list of action items from that feedback. Some of those action items were already underway, and we have been planning others. Expect a more formal report of those items in the near future, and discussion of that work at our Board meetings and in these updates.

On our committees, we have some exciting steps forward. The PLA Space hosted its first private rental to Hitchin' Bitches PDX, which went off with the exact right number of hitches. We have two more events planned at the PLA Space this month, and are already up to four in November! If you're interested in touring or booking the PLA Space, or have questions about it, please reach out by email to plaspace@portlandleather.org.

Likewise, the Community Education Committee is operating again and booking more new and exciting classes! We have Mx. Knotty's floor rope predicaments class this coming Saturday (Halloween, spooky!) at the PLA Space, and we just published two more classes in November: Power, Privilege, and Intersectionality with Dr. B at Sanctuary, and In the Community, a conflict resolution class, from Sera Miles over Zoom. This is in addition to our monthly free foundational consent class, being taught in November by Kol Dale and Christina B. Dynamite.

And finally, as Kinkfest gets going for the year, I'll be working with the KF Executive Director to include more transparency into the work we're doing over there as well. This week, we officially signed our agreement with the venue, locking in Kinkfest for its standard timing on Easter weekend, this year March 26-28th. Applications are open for those looking to vend, present a workshop, and volunteer now, with attendee tickets going on sale starting November 20th.

I'd also like to bring special attention to the application for the BootySoBig scholarship, also open now. This scholarship provides free admission and other financial support to BIPOC and/or disabled community members looking to attend Kinkfest who face financial barriers in doing so. This scholarship honors BootySoBig, who inspired many in the community with her big heart, kind spirit and powerful masochism before she died on January 21, 2023. We provided more tickets through this scholarship last year than ever before, and we are honored to carry that same level of support forward this year.

Aside from getting all the applications open, the KF team is also working on updating and formalizing some of our event policies and procedures, many of which have not been fully documented as the event has grown rapidly in recent years. We're also making updates to the event Code of Conduct for attendees, which will be available no later than November 20th when attendee tickets go on sale.

As always, my inbox is open at president@portlandleather.org to any questions, concerns, or feedback, and the board as a whole can be reached at board@portlandleather.org. We also are still monitoring our general feedback survey here:

https://www.portlandleather.org/survey.php?menu=showsurvey&surveyid=4

Yours in Leather,
Andy, PLA President